Payvand.com - According to Iranian Mehr News Agency two Iranian MPs are
worried about the perhaps too frequent travels of Juliette Binoche to Iran.
During the last parliamentary session the MPs jointly requested that Iranian
officials be cautious about issuing visas for foreign actors to visit Iran.

"The appearance
of foreign actors in joint productions would result in cultural destruction
since they would turn into role-models for Iranian youth," the notice read.

"We have heard
that certain consequences might result from foreign actors' trips to Iran -
consequences which might lead to intelligence and security issues," said Jalal
Yahyazadeh, one of the petitioners, who is MP for the cities of Taft and Meibod.

French actress
Binoche has recently traveled to Iran, to widen her knowledge of the country
prior to her performance in the movie "Certified Copy", which is scheduled to be
directed by celebrated Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami.

Oscar-winner
Binoche stayed in Iran briefly in April 2006 on her very first visit to Iran
which was warmly welcomed by the Iranian press, movie buffs and authorities who
saw in this visit a sign of friendly relations between France and Iran at a time
when Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was at odds with the International
community over and particularly the USA over his country's nuclear ambitions and
his controversial comments on the Holocaust and calls to wipe the State of
Israel off the Map. President Ahmadinejad also faced an uproar of critics during
his visit to Columbia University where he openly challenged questions on the
existence of Homosexuals in Iran.

Binoche visited Iran last December to see Kiarostami
with whom she is to work on Certified Copy ŠIRNA & imdb

Although
Iran's President has not yet commented in regard to this issue the critics
towards Mrs. Binoche presence do come from MP's representing his constituency of
hardline conservatives. As Iran's president seems to be in a critical situation
and even abandoned by Iran's Spiritual Leader Ayatollah Khamenei one may wonder
if the current administration is not trying to look for scapegoats to reassert
itself in the public eye.

Last November
Prior to Binoche's December Visit, the French Star was the playmate of the month on the
cover of Playboy Magazine's French Issue. An extremely
artistic photo shoot that could hardly be seen as a "nude" display
of Binoche compared to what the magazine often displays ( without ever being
vulgar or disrespectful of the female gender sex) may have been the source of
this new absurd parliamentary controversy. Binoche is regarded as one of the
greatest actress' of her generation and was awarded the 2nd Oscar
EVER given to a French Star in a supporting and or Leading Role for her
supporting role in Anthony Minghella's The English Patient. Like nearly
all actress' in free and democratic societies she has naturally played nude in
such films as in Jean Luc Goddard's Je vous Salut Marie , or in
Philip Kauffman's adaptation of Kundera's novel The Unbeareable Lightness of Being.The issue of nudity on or off screen is taboo
not to say forbidden in Iranian films since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
Cooperation between Iranian and non Iranian film professionals was not even
imaginable before the level of respectability and recognition that the Iranian
New Wave Cinema received with the works of such maestro's as Abbas Kiarostami
and the Makhmalbaf family at Cannes and other film festivals worldwide.
Kiarostami's Palme D'Or for his film The Taste of the Cherry
in 1997 also symbolized the coming to age of a new generation of Iranians ready
to enter the social and political scene of a country isolated from the
international community due to War, terrorism (outside its borders) and
Revolution. The election of reformist President Mohamed Khatami in a landslide
election was warmly welcomed by the international community and Iranian Cinema
imposed itself throughout the 1990's for more than a decade as one of the most
innovative cinema's of its time.

Playmate of November Issue of Playboy magazineŠimdb & playboy.fr

However Iranian Cinema has been struggling with both critical and box office
failures particularly after Sept 11Th and in the past two years, the
number of Iranian films present at such acclaimed film festivals as Cannes or
Berlin have diminished to nearly oblivion. This has led some directors such as
Bahman Ghobadi or Mohsen Makhmalbaf to choose self exile in order to shoot their
films outside the financial and artistic control of the Iranian government
subsidies and censors. The latter directors have also become more bold in
exploring themes deemed taboo in Iranian cinema. Probably the most striking
example was in Mohsen Makhmalbaf's latest film The Scream of the Ants
shot entirely in India where he openly filmed nude scenes with his female star
Luna Shad ( Also main Host on VOA Cultural Program SHABAHANG) which
remains unimaginable and impossible to do in Iran today. Makhmalbaf seems
adamant to work in exile ever since unlike other members of his talented family
who nevertheless have been facing threats and on set sabotage as was the case for Samira Makhmalbaf
during the shooting of her latest film the Two Legged Horse
in Afghanistan but it was not very clear who they seemed to hold responsible:
The American and allied Troops in Afghanistan or Islamic Fundamentalists ?.

Makhmalbaf latest movie Scream of the Ants starring a "nude"
Luna Shad and co-star Mamhoud ChokrollahiŠ Makhmalbaf film house

Binoche is the
second foreign show biz celebrity to visit Iran since the victory of the Islamic
Revolution in 1979. In June 2005, Sean Penn traveled to Tehran as a journalist
to cover the Iranian presidential election campaign for the San Francisco
Chronicle.

One can only
regret Iran's lack of cultural openness but hope that this absurd reaction to
Binoche's presence as well as to other foreign visitors to Iran will be ignored
by the current administration and its President who are NORMALLY in charge of
supporting Iran's cultural prestige and presence beyond its borders.

About the Author:
Darius KADIVAR is a Freelance Journalist, Film Historian, and Media Consultant.
He is also contributes to OCPC Magazine in LA/US and to the
London Based IC Publications The Middle East Magazine.